


Of Chaucer and Talking Dogs

by whyyesitscar



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen, Warehouse 13 Ficathon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:59:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1402255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whyyesitscar/pseuds/whyyesitscar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things don't go right a lot in the Warehouse, but they especially don't go right on April Fool's Day. (Mostly family feels, though there is the barest hint of Bering & Wells.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Chaucer and Talking Dogs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goldenwanderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenwanderer/gifts).



“Artie, I’m sorr—”

“No, no. No speaking.”

“I just, I didn’t know it was an artifact and even if I had I wouldn’t have known it would do _this_ —”

“Rule number one about this Warehouse: don’t. touch. _anything_. Haven’t you learned that by now?”

“Okay, in my defense, it was a first edition book and I’ve read a lot of other ones in the library and none of those are artifacts. I mean, come on, Artie—first edition of _The Canterbury Tales_!”

“Yes, which is why you should have come to me before you opened it up, because if you had you would have known that it’s one of the Warehouse’s most volatile artifacts, and _of **course**_ it just so happens to have the first recorded reference to April Fool’s Day—”

“Mykes, what are you doing?”

“—I mean there are over twenty stories within that text , depending on which source you’ve got, and they all have a different effect on whoever touches it—”

“Shut up, Pete, maybe he won’t notice.”

“—it’s impossible to predict which one you’ll get and even if you do, the downside will manifest in one of a hundred different ways—”

“What number is that, six?”

“Pete, _shut up._ ”

“Dude, is Artie still yelling at you? I thought he only got that angry at Pete.”

“Claudia, no!”

“—don’t even get me started on the last time The Reeve manifested; I won’t ever look at corn the sa— _ow!_ ”

Claudia scampers away and blushes. “I’m sorry, so sorry; I don’t why I did that. It just…seemed like a really good idea, at the time?”

Artie growls and reaches behind his back, flailing his stubby arms before finally connecting with a piece of paper. “ _Kick me_ ,” he snarls, “at least go for a good prank.”

Myka bites her lip and twists her fingers. “I don’t even remember writing that, Artie, I swear. It kind of just happened.” He coughs and glares and she looks away. “Just like the other five.”

Artie sighs and rubs his shin. “Go…go try to find that unfortunate artifact and try not to break anything—or anyone—along the way.”

Myka’s off and running before he even finishes speaking.

/

It was just supposed to be a bit of light reading. Pete would laugh if he heard that, but Myka grew up in a bookstore and taught herself as many languages as she could—even the dead ones—just for the fun of it. So, a first edition of _The Canterbury Tales_ written in Middle English—yeah, that’s actually light reading.

(“Technically it isn’t a first edition, darling,” Helena had said when Myka showed it to her. “There are dozens of versions of that manuscript and no two are alike.”

“Then there are dozens of first editions,” Myka had quipped.

“You’re deliberately being contrary.”

“And you’re deliberately being pedantic,” Myka countered. “What else is new?”

“Oh, I’m sure I can show you a few things,” Helena smiled, and there was that trusty couch again.

Maybe the text was always an artifact, but Myka will always maintain that Helena is the one who set it off. Myka was just in the right place at the _very_ right time.)

But now is a terrible time and every place is the wrong one because everyone is scattered across the Warehouse looking for a stupid manuscript that keeps making Myka prank everybody, even though she hasn’t touched it in hours. It isn’t a deadly artifact, or really even a dangerous one, but it sure as hell is extremely annoying.

Myka glides down aisles, keeping a sharp eye out and trying to force one of Pete’s vibes to come to her. She’s the one being affected by the artifact; surely she should be able to sense it or something.

Twenty minutes of trying and all she’s got is an expression somewhere between confusion and constipation.

She groans and composes herself as her Farnsworth rings. Whoever’s on the other end of the line won’t be happy; she knows that.

“Hey Artie, what’s— _ohhh._ ”

(Myka was right. She’s also trying her very hardest not to laugh.)

“Did you put ink on my glasses?!” he splutters.

“I mean, am I really guilty if I don’t remember doing it…?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, well—was there a reason for your call, or did you just want to yell at me?”

Artie squints; his cheeks fold, black smudges seeping into his worry lines. It wouldn’t be so funny if he didn’t have so many of them.

“Mostly just the yelling,” he grumbles.

“As long as you’re here, can I pick your brain about where this thing might be?”

“You haven’t found it yet?”

Myka rolls her eyes. “Artie, it’s barely been half an hour.”

“And you’ve had quicker retrievals than that. Color me unimpressed.”

“Look, what can you tell me about this thing? I don’t understand how it disappeared so quickly.”

“It’s not meant to be found, Myka. I’m surprised anyone managed to find it in the library—I’ve had an alert out on it for the past ten years. Listen”—he adjusts his glasses, comes away with darker fingers, and scowls—“the first version of _The Canterbury Tales_ to be published in print was William Caxton’s 1478 edition.”

“And this is that text.”

“No, this is the lost manuscript it was based on.”

Myka winces and feels her heart complete several backflips. Claudia hasn’t finished gathering data for her study yet, but in Myka’s experience, lost anythings are always volatile artifacts.

“Well…with all of us looking, maybe we’ll find it faster,” she ventures.

(Yeah, she believes it just as much as Artie does.)

“Just find it, Myka. And find it _now._ ”

“Yeah, su—okay, Artie, we have to work on your Farnsworth etiquette,” she says to a black screen.

Myka is on the hunt again for barely five minutes before she’s interrupted once more, this time by her cell phone.

It’s Pete. Of course it is.

“What, the Farnsworth isn’t cool anymore?”

“What? No, I called, like, six times and just got interference.”

Myka furrows her brows. “Well, I was talking to Artie but not for a couple of minutes.”

“Yeah, well, that’s how long it took me to figure out how to work my stupid phone!”

“Okay, Pete, you’ve had the same phone for three years. Why is everything so hard now?”

“Because everything is in Mandarin.”

Myka is suddenly glad he gave up on the Farnsworth—the blush she’s currently sporting extends far down her neck. “Listen, I don’t even know the last time I touched your phone—”

“Clearly sometime in the last hour, but that’s not the point.”

“How did you even call me if you can’t understand anything?”

“Mykes, you’ve been my first speed dial for as long as I’ve had this phone. But look, I had a thought about this book, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It likes to trick people, right? And, I mean, you’re not really going to trick anyone with that drooling bell or something. Or, well, it won’t be a very good trick—that bell has too high a novelty quotient to really effectively prank anyone—”

“ _Pete._ What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that if I were this book, I’d go hide around all the really nasty artifacts.”

“Oh, shit,” Myka sighs. “Okay, I’ll meet you at the Dark Vault—”

“Hooo, no. No, my accursed partner, you would bring down the Warehouse in two seconds if you stepped into the Dark Vault while that thing was there. You’re like that king with the gold only instead of gold you have bad juju.”

“Pete.”

“I’m just saying, I’ll be in the Dark Vault and I’m telling you because I know how you like to know where I am.”

“Okay. Let me know if you find anything.”

There is static on the line as Pete stalls, and Myka knows that means he still has something to say. She just wishes he would say it faster.

“I had another thought, Mykes.”

Myka expels a very controlled breath through her nose. “What, Pete.”

“Remember what happened the last time we were whammied by an artifact that messed with our memory?”

“A lot of things happened, Pete.”

“Yeah, but have you seen Steve at all today? Because that would kind of be the best prank ever. Again.”

“Oh, _shit_.”

/

Myka does find Steve by the Bronzer, but he isn’t a statue. He might be easier to deal with if he were.

“—I just, you know, I think I’ve gotten used to this job and then something happens to make it even weirder. Do you think it ever gets easier?” Steve rubs his hands on his knees and shakes his head. “Oh, why am I asking you; you’re newer than I am.”

That isn’t the way Myka was expecting that sentence to end, considering Steve’s fellow conversationalist has four legs and a tail.

“Steve, you’re talking to—”

“I think you have to learn to accept the weird,” Steve’s companion replies. “You’re the Buddhist after all, aren’t you?”

Myka’s eyes bug out of her head and she has half a mind to pull out her Tesla. Or she would, if she had it on her.

“Steve, Trailer…”

Steve finally looks up at her and shrugs. “Yeah, he talks now.”

“Okay.” They have a talking dog. “Okay,” Myka repeats. They didn’t _need_ a talking dog, but now they have one. Kind of how things go in the Warehouse.

“When did he, uh, I mean—Trailer, when did you start talking?”

Trailer hops down from his stool and sits in front of her, perched upright on his hind legs. “I’ve always talked, Myka. You just don’t normally understand me.”

“Right. That makes...sense, I guess.”

“I started understanding him early this morning,” Steve supplies.

“Okay, so right around the time I touched the Chaucer—but why is Trailer talking? That’s not really a prank.”

“Chaucer is pulling pranks?”

“What? No. Well, sort of. Wait—which one of you said that?”

“I did,” they both say. Steve raises a hand and Trailer raises a paw, and Myka rolls her eyes so hard she sees her hair from the wrong side of her head.

Steve looks sheepish, but not sheepish enough. He’s been spending too much time with Pete, Myka decides. “Sorry,” he grins. “I couldn’t resist. What’s going on with Chaucer?”

Myka explains as quickly as she can and tries not to focus on how disconcerting it is that Trailer nods along just as ardently as Steve does. “I just don’t understand why Trailer is suddenly speaking English. I mean, it’s unsettling but it’s not really an April Fool’s trick.”

“Well, does everything have to be intended to be a prank?” Steve offers.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there are thirty or so of these stories, right? Is there a talking dog in any of them?”

“No,” Myka answers, furrowing her brows. “But there are talking roosters and foxes. I mean,” she explains, “in _The Nun’s Priest’s Tale_ , a really shallow rooster is tricked by a fox into being captured by hunters.”

“Okay, so the stories are coming to life? We can handle a rooster and a fox.”

Myka bites her lip and shakes her head.

“Oh, no,” Steve groans, “I may not be Pete but I know that face and that face never means anything good.”

“Well, if it was just that one tale, we’d be fine. But you’re supposed to take _The Nun’s Priest’s Tale_ in conjunction with _The Monk’s Tale_ , and he spends his whole story recounting the deaths of tragic historical figures.”

“Like who?”

“Hercules, Samson, Julius Caesar, Lucifer…and about a dozen others.”

“Man, that’s twice I’ve dealt with Julius Caesar and neither encounter has really been fun,” Steve whines.

“Right, so we really need to neutralize this thing.”

“I can help with that!” Trailer chimes in. He’s saying words, but somehow it still sounds like a bark. Myka can’t wait until he’s just a dog again. She has no idea how Artie could stand being inside his head.

“You know where the book is?”

“No, but you touched it, right?”

Myka nods.

Trailer darts forward and sniffs at her hand. “This way!” he yells, running off to their left.

“This is so _weird_ ,” Steve hisses as they jog to keep up.

/

Myka leaves a message for Pete to stop looking in the Dark Vault once Trailer sprints past it, then she pulls out her Farnsworth and gives Claudia a buzz.

“Shaving cream in my tool kit, Myka, _really_?”

“Yeah, can we talk about that later?” Myka pants. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Why are you running?” Claudia sets her jaw and leans closer to the screen. “Did you set off a bomb, because I swear, Myka, that’s so bad it’s not even a bad prank.”

“No, no, I just need you to grab your Goozooka and meet us—where are we going, anyway?” she yells to Trailer.

“IRS!” he yells back.

“—meet us in the IRS Quartum!”

“Was that Steve?”

“Nope,” Steve answers, popping his face into the frame. “That was Trailer.”

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, Jinksy, but Trailer is a _dog_.”

“Yes, he is,” Myka interrupts, “and we’ll tell you all about it later. Please just get there as soon as you can.”

“You got it, boss.”

/

“It doesn’t want to be found,” Trailer says as they slow to a jog amongst Roman artifacts, “so we’ll have to fan out.”

“I can’t believe a _dog_ is giving us orders,” Steve mutters.

“I can’t believe we’re following them,” Myka replies.

“Say we don’t find this in time and other stories start coming to life…”

“You don’t want them to,” Myka finishes. “Keep looking.”

“Claudia Donovan: Girl Wonder, to the rescue!” Claudia announces as she runs over. “How come a good ol’ static bag won’t do the job?”

“Well, if you’ll pardon the pun, this artifact seems to be a little tricky.”

“ _Ugh._ ”

“God, Myka.”

“Even I don’t think that was funny.”

“Oh, what do you know; you’re a dog.”

“I got it!” Steve yells, his voice echoing almost out of earshot.

“Don’t take your eyes off of it!” Myka yells as she jogs over.

“No probl—oh, crap. Myka, coming your way!”

Myka barely has a moment to puzzle over Steve word’s before a very old and very heavy book comes flying straight for her head. She catches it just in time with wonderfully gloved fingers; Pete would be proud. Still, it keeps wriggling in her grasp.

“Claud, it’s still trying to get away!”

“Right, on it!”

For an instant, Myka notices that Claudia looks entirely too pleased with herself—and then everything turns violet.

It seems that Claudia empties the entire gun on her before it finally stops.

“Was that really necessary?” she spits through dripping purple goo.

“Shaving cream, Myka.”

“Yeah, but—”

“In my _tool kit_.”

“Okay, okay.”

/

Helena returns late in the evening, conveniently just after everything has been put back to working order and Artie’s irritation has mostly ebbed.

Myka makes her pick the book that night.


End file.
